I wonder if leader level achieved is a good reflection of their respective strengths ?

[tedhebert]

Hey all,

I know we have leader discussions threads already, and we're not yet at ranking them, but looking at my progress tab in the achievement main menu always makes me wonder...

I have now completed 20 games with 20 different leaders. Not a single time did I replay a leader yet. I like to complete before replaying, so I've played all civs and now on my way to all leaders.

After one playthrough only, here are the levels I have achieved on the leaders:

Level 7: Hikimo Queen of Wa
Level 6: Charlemagne, Confucius, Lafayette, Xerxes KoK
Level 5: Augustus, Ben, Hatshepsut, Ibn, Pacachuti, Trung Trac
Level 4: Ada, Amina, Asoka WQ, Catherine, Friedrich Oblique, Tubman, Rizal, Tecumseh
Level 3: Isabella (although she was my very first game, so I'm sure I'd do better with her now)
Not played yet: Ashoka WR, Friedrich Baroque, Genghis, Himiko HS, Machiavelli, Both Napoleons, Bolivar and Xerxes Achaemenid ( I am prioritizing the leaders that have steam achievements )

Understanding that the civs I played each leader with probably impacts the results, I'm wondering if you feel this is representative of the leader's strengths ?

Disclaimer, I played Catherine and Ada at deity, Isabella/Ben/Augustus and Xerxes KOK at sovereign and all others at immortal. Catherine was my only loss as I was missing 2000G to make the last banker tick and was only making 350G a turn, was really strapped for G in that game all the time, so Trung finished the science victory ahead of me. I was happily surprised by that ;-)

PS Himiko Wa has in my opinion the strongest trait of all with the free endeavor support !

PPS: I have close to 440H gameplay... so that makes an average of 22H a game... Am I very slow or are you all taking that much time ? I play large and huge maps since we can, standard all the time before and long ages always

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

My game sessions generally average about 3 - 4 hours each, and I find that I can usually finish Antiquity in one session, Exploration in 2, and Modern in 1 or 2, so my games average 12 - 20 hours each. I play almost exclusively on Huge maps with 9 - 10 total Civs in play.

I have a few Leaders that I've reached level 9 - 10 with, a bunch at 3 - 6, and a few still at level 1. I don't think this represents the strength of the Leaders, though, as much as it represents the kinds of games I feel like playing.

As in, if I want to play a militaristic game, Charlemagne, Revolutionary Napoleon, or now Genghis are my 'favorites'. If I want to try to build a trade/commercial powerhouse Civ, Xerxes the Achaemenid or Amina are more appropriate. If I want to be sure of playing with a certain Civ in Exploration or Modern Age, that will affect my Leader/Civ choices as well.

And, of course, even if the Level of the Leader meant anything, achieving that level also reflects the Civs I played with that leader, which can make a huge difference.

 

[Sagax]

Absolutely not a good reflection, especially when there are documented cases of some leader achievements not being counted and thus depriving you of the leader EXP.

My playthroughs have been me maximizing legacy points, which naturally feeds into your leader progression. Thus, I consistently get any leader to lvl 7-8 in the span of a single three-age game. If I like their lvl 9 memento, then I may push for one more playthrough with them. So not really indicative of their strength, more of me being slave to meta progression

 

[vorlon_mi]

Agree with @Sagax , that the leader score in the first game with a leader is not a great reflection. Especially when many of these were my early games, still learning how to play.

In each of the previous games, I've often leaned on the science/space victory -- dates all the way back to my Civ3 (and even Civ2) days. So, the "best" or strongest leader for my play style might be different from someone who prefers being a warmonger. I won a lot of Civ6 battles as Genghis Khan, way more than when I played Seondeok. In Civ7, I haven't settled on my favorite leader yet. I had heard lots of good things about Isabella, but my first experience with her was underwhelming. I had a lot of fun playing Jose Rizal; my very first game was Tecumseh, so I'm sure I could do better when I play him again.

 

[disjointaccount]

I have every leader at level 10, and I did that by first playing a "normal" game with each leader just seeing where the game took me, and then 1-2 XP grinding games where I chased every legacy path in every age. The first games were all over the place purely because I clicked much more with some leaders' kits than others. By the end of the XP grinding games, I felt I had a decent grasp of most leaders' kits, but it's not as though I struggled to hit almost every legacy path on every leader (the only exceptions were wonders and pre-rework treasure fleets, which were hard simply because they're hard, and there aren't leader abiliies that affect legacy paths like some civ abilities do), so every game played pretty much the same without leader kits factoring in too much.

Basically, I think leader level is nothing more than an indicator of playtime with a leader. The higher the level, the likelier it is you'll be more familiar with their kit and therefore able to get more out of them, but it's not as if the requirements for maximising XP are difficult enough that even the weakest leaders would struggle at all with them.